


and my pleas (Whispered or Screamed) find no relief

by twinSky



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, general ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21948727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinSky/pseuds/twinSky
Summary: Kaede looks up into Rantarou’s far too kind eyes and decides that wherever she is, it must be hell.-Kaede and Rantarou have a chat in the afterlife.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede & Amami Rantaro
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	and my pleas (Whispered or Screamed) find no relief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedBanshee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBanshee/gifts).



> Title comes from a paraphrased line from FFXIV, full line is; 'My hands find no purchase. My gestures catch no eye. And my pleas, be they whispered or screamed, reach not a single ear.'
> 
> =
> 
> This was written for Red, as a little gift thing I did for readers of my fic TRWAMTP. Hope you enjoy because I was aiming for hurt/comfort and wound up with this instead!

Kaede's last thoughts are of pain. Of the rope against her throat pulling and pulling, scratching at her and leaving painful red marks as it robs her of air. Of how her legs ache as they crash repeatedly and painfully into the keys, a beautiful sound of misery filling the room.

Kaede's last thoughts are of pain. Of the way her heart clenches as she is pulled away from Shuichi's reached out hand. Of how she betrayed his trust, so kind and so fragile, but she had to, and she trusts that he'll be fine, he's so much stronger than he gives himself credit for. Of the grief that fills her as she watches her classmate watch her suffer, of the people she failed to protect. Of the rage and sorrow that overcome her in equal measure because not only did her plan to stop the mastermind fail, she killed Rantarou in their stead, innocent if mysterious Rantarou, who had wanted to get them all out as much as she did.

Kaede's last thoughts are of nothing, because the dead do not feel and they cannot think.

-

Kaede's first thoughts are of pain. Of how her body lurches forward and gasps for breath as if seeking for relief it does not have. Of the all encompassing ache that overcomes her body like it has not been able to move in years. Like every limb is asleep and useless. There is an ache in her throat and she reaches a wobbly hand up to soothe it. She wishes she had some water...

The thought makes her pause, gaze darting around wherever it is she is. The room is white from head to toe, a white so all encompassing she can't tell where it starts and where it ends.

Though that might just be the fuzziness in her head making her thoughts blurry, her mind sluggish.

How did she even get here? The last thing she remembers is... The last thing she remembers is... Why can't she remember. What _does_ she remember? Her name is Kaede Akamatsu, she is 17 years old, and she is... she is...

Her mind stalls, refusing to fill in the blanks on why she is here, what had happened to her? Her hands curl around the sheets of the bed she awoke on, her head beginning to pound. Some kind of accident? She’s not connected to anything though, just sitting here by herself, in a room that looks like it was created around her with no exit. If she _was_ in some kind of accident wouldn’t someone be here? A sign of life outside of her own, something to let others know she woke up? How long had she been asleep for? Unconscious for? She remembers being 17… is she still 17? There are no mirrors here, but her hands look the same, if weaker, trembling. She pushes the sheets down and her clothes are the same uniform she recognises, so probably? It’d be nice to get some answers.

Nice to know what she did to end up here.

The thought triggers… _something._ Not remembrance, no, but the low power headache that had been building and pounding between her brows triples in it’s intensity, so sudden and overwhelming she jerks, body curling in on itself to try to abate the pain. This has to mean something but meaning is lost when her head feels like it’s trying to crack open.

“Kaede?”

A voice? Strangely familiar she thinks through the haze of pain. How did it even get here, she didn’t hear anything, didn’t see any doors?

“Kaede can you look up at me? Please?”

The voice is soft, gentle, as if it understands, as if it _knows_. She wills herself to look up, to see whoever it is. This person who has answers, who could be her salvation.

She looks up and only finds damnation instead.

“Kaede,” Rantarou, _Rantarou_ , her mind hisses as the memories come crashing in, says “are you alright?”

Kaede looks up into Rantarou’s far too kind eyes and decides that wherever she is, it must be hell.

“ _Don’t touch me._ ” She hisses and her voice is foreign in her ears, harsh and steady even in her confusion. _I hurt you_ , she doesn’t say, _I_ killed _you. How can you bear to stand near me?_

“I know this might seem odd, but you have to calm down.”

Something snaps at that, where there was pain before a sudden clarity instead. She pushes him away, ignoring the look of shock and confusion in his eyes as she pushes herself up, back pushing against the wall. She looks over to the side of her bed, and wonders if her legs would support her if she tried to get up.

She decides against it. If she fell –if he tried to offer her a hand, her body shudders.

_Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, I ruined you stop looking so earnest._

“Don’t come near me.” She stumbles, voice tripping over each word, heart racing in her chest. _Why would you want to come near me?_

The look on Rantarou’s face is one of earnest understanding and it makes her want to scream. I killed you, I killed you, you’re not alive and it’s my fault what exactly do you understand. How is he even here? A spectre to haunt her? Is this her punishment for her crimes, the rest of her afterlife will be the boy she killed looking at her with soft eyes and a far too understanding smile.

And then, just like that, it’s gone. Placid expression and easy smile disappearing into blankness and Kaede thinks that this is it. Here the illusion will shatter, this white room and too kind eyes will melt away to nothingness and Kaede will burn in the hellfire she deserves for the innocent life she ended.

The eerie blankness of Rantarou’s gaze oddly calms her, because that at least makes sense, that at least fits into the image she has of someone who she killed.

His face twitches, like he wants to smile again, but settles back down before Kaede can raise her defenses again. And isn’t that odd, that she finds more comfort in the nothing of his expression than a nice smile.

“Kaede,” He says calmly and this time Kaede listens because she’s sure the next words will strike her down. Will finally read out the sentence her actions have incurred. Rantarou, contrary and odd even in the afterlife, defies her expectations by simply saying, “It’s okay.”

Something hot swells in her stomach, cloying and angry and she screams, throwing a pillow at him with all the flimsy strength she can muster and then promptly buries her face in her knees.

When she looks up again she’s alone, and the endless white walls stare back at her mockingly.

-

There is nothing in this room, no clocks, no doorknobs, aside from her bed there is a white table that sometimes she wakes up and finds food, enough to space out throughout the day. She should be going out of her mind with boredom, and maybe she is. Because her mind just races through the events of the game and of her meeting with Rantarou over and over again until it feels like she doesn’t exist outside those moments.

She feels like she’s falling apart at the seams and can’t bring herself to care, after all isn’t it what she deserves?

 _“It’s okay_.” Rantarou’s voice chants in her head, the picture of sincerity. He meant them, her hallucination, actually him, she doesn’t know, but the does know he had meant those words with full conviction.

It’s somehow worse than the words being a pretty lie.

After all, what’s ever been okay about killing a friend?

-

She wakes up and Rantarou is there, sitting on a chair that has never been there before, tapping an idle rhythm on the desk atop which sits an uncovered omelet, and a couple other dishes stacked and hidden behind their covers.

Perhaps it is the sleep weighing down her thoughts that lets her mutter, “Are you here to finally send me to hell?” Because for all that this has been maddening she thinks hell would involve a bit more suffering, a bit less of her driving herself mad, isn’t s _omeone_ going to find joy in her misery. She thinks it should be Rantarou, or maybe Shuichi, any of them really –she let them all down after all.

The boy flinches, nails clicking as he stops his tapping. “I’m not some demon here to curse you.” He says idly, but he won’t look her in the eyes.

(Why should he, Kaede wouldn’t if their positions were reversed.)

“Something worse then?” She offers, just as casually.

And at that Rantarou laughs, bright and full-bodied and it leaves her stunned.

“Maybe, not in the way you’re thinking of though.”

Exhaustion and loneliness make everything a bit duller, at least that’s the excuse she wants to use for the reason she doesn’t fight this time. If Rantarou is leading her to madness, that’s fine, better than the white walls of this room and her own conscious doing it for her.

“So then what,” she says, tired, exhausted, “Why are you here?” There are apologies lodged into her throat, a thousand condolences she wants to spill, but only if he wants to hear them. Kaede will not say words for her own comfort, that’s not her right, she doesn’t deserve any of it.

Rantarou hums, resuming his tapping, “If I’m being honest, I don’t really know.”

She sputters, and sits up on her bed, feet swinging over the edge to face him (her strength has returned but her throat still burns sometimes, her legs still tremble). “What do you mean?”

He sighs, and for a moment looks as fragile as Kaede constantly feels, before that expression clears. “Just thought that maybe you could use someone to talk to, someone who gets it.”

Kaede wants to scream at those words, what would Rantarou know about this, this terrible ugly guilt that claws at her, that reminds her of death she caused. Kaede _wants_ to scream, but she doesn’t, because just like the ‘it’s okay’ he had offered so casually before, the sentence reeks of sincerity.

And people can lie, but why lie about this?

He must see the turmoil in her eyes because he continues without waiting for her reply.

“If our roles had been reversed I would have done the same thing. I told you I had a way to end this, and if I had found them in that room before you had gotten to me well then…” he smiles, cold and sharp, “well they wouldn’t be alive, not after what they were trying to make us do, what they would have done to all of us if I hadn’t so coincidentally died.”

“But I killed you.” She stresses, because there are words chanting in her head like a prayer, a promise and she doesn’t know how to take any of this.

The look he gives her is somewhere between dangerous and playful, “When we sneak around we get what we deserve, if I had trusted anyone with my plan maybe this wouldn’t have happened, if someone had been there to watch out for me maybe I wouldn’t have died.”

“I don’t think a friend would have saved you from what I did.” She tries, but Rantarou just shakes his head.

“Could’ve told me to dodge,” he offers and then shrugs his shoulders, “Not that it matters, it wasn’t you who killed me.”

Her eyes widen, her pulse quickens, and if it wasn’t crazy she would swear she can hear her blood buzzing in her ears. “I –” Her mouth feels dry, words sticking on her tongue, “We found the shotput ball, I sent it down, it was me.”

 _It was me,_ she wants to scream, because she’s dead isn’t she? Shuichi figured it out, pieced together her plan and found her guilty, Monokuma found me guilty. _It was me!!_

Rantarou eyes turn terribly pitiful, and he reaches out a hand to her before pulling it back. She’s glad, she doesn’t want his pity, doesn’t want pity from the boy she murdered. “If you’re the one who sent the one who fell down from above I’m sorry to say it missed me. I watched it fall, watched it roll and then…” For the first time his face has that haunted look she would expect from someone who got murdered. “Tsumugi was there, and she smiled so cruelly before swinging the shotput ball down with more force than I could imagine her having.” He sighs, tapping a faster, erratic, rhythm onto the table as he smiles wanly. “You know the rest.”

His lips are moving, Kaede notes faintly, but she hears none of it, words settling into a hum as she repeats that phrase over and over again. Tsumugi, _Tsumugi_ , who had to have been the mastermind, because only through that room could she have gotten there quick enough. Who left to go the bathroom, a trip too quick to go downstairs, to avoid the cameras, but fast enough to scurry down a secret path and through a secret door.

Fast enough to commit murder and pin it all on her.

Kaede stands and Rantarou pushes his chair back to give her room. She ignores him, stepping around him and pacing in circles. She feels… she feels alive. There was something in her that snuffed out the second they saw Rantarou’s body laying in a puddle of his own blood that feels revived at the declaration.

She whips around, not quite touching him, scared that all of this is still some hallucination, still just her punishment.

(Letting her believe she is free, absolving her of her guilt, just to shove it all back in her face is cruel and terrible and if true just what she has coming.)

“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

“You don’t,” he says blandly, his hands reaching up to wrap around hers, hovering just before him, “I can’t prove it to you, you’ll have to believe me.” His hands squeeze hers, “I’m real Kaede, I’m not the devil nipping at your heels, your guilt manifested. I’m _here_ , and I get it. You did what you had to do, so did I, and we both got what was coming to us in the end. Except you didn’t deserve it.”

“Neither did you,” she mumbles breathless, staring a bit too intently into green eyes.

“And yet here we both are.” he says wryly.

“Here we are.” She agrees absently, eyes darting around the room unsure of what she expects. For colour to bleed in as the cold leaves her? For the walls to fall apart and reveal it for the joke, the deception, she can’t help but feeling it still is?

None of that happens, it’s still just her and Rantarou in a room she still can’t figure out.

“Where are we?” She asks and the soft smile he had been looking at her with dims before wiping away completely.

“Not yet,” Rantarou says with a sigh, “There’s still so much to explain.” He looks around the room, for the first time seeming to acknowledge how odd the space is, how for as far as she’s concerned he appears and disappears like a ghost.

“Then explain,” She says pulling him up from his seat, she feels possessed with too much energy buzzing in her with every new word that comes from Rantarou’s mouth. She needs to –needs to move, walk, _be._ He follows her easily, a small smile on his face as he lets her lead them around. “I’m all ears, dead or not if there’s hell to raise and injustice to fight I’ll do it, to whatever capability I have. We’ll do it right this time, together.”

“You can’t die twice,” Rantarou hums, looking amused.

“If anyone could find a way…” she says, semi-threateningly, and then when silence settles between them says the words that won’t leave her alone. “I’m sorry.”

_Sorry I didn’t try harder to get to know you, that I let you act alone. Sorry that I tried to kill you, even if you weren’t my target. Sorry that even now I’m not sure if you’re going to turn around and spit in my face and tell me this is all a lie and the weight you lifted off my chest will come crashing down and kill me._

Rantarou’s eyes are sharp, even if is smile is gentle, and Kaede can almost feel the way he reads her thoughts. “It’s okay.” Rantarou says.

And this time, Kaede believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> VR AU or some weird purgatory? Is Amami real? A figment of Kaede's brain in her dying moments? Her own personal hell? Answers only me and him will ever know. It's up for interpretation, whether you want to think them dead or alive, but they'll find a way to raise hell regardless. The dead and betrayed have little to hold them back.
> 
> Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!!  
> [Tumblr](http://twinsky.tumblr.com)/[Twitter](https://twitter.com/twinsky72)


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